Chapter 68

3. The real nature of this Union.(a) Its great importance.—While the Scriptures represent the person of Christ as the crowning mystery of the Christian scheme (Matt 11:27; Col. 1:27; 2:2; 1 Tim. 3:16), they also incite us to its study (John 17:3; 20:27; Luke 24:39; Phil. 3:8, 10). This is the more needful, since Christ is not only the central point of Christianity, but is Christianity itself—the embodied reconciliation and union between man and God. The following remarks are offered, not as fully explaining, but only as in some respects relieving, the difficulties of the subject.Matt. 11:27—“no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.”Here it seems to be intimated that the mystery of the nature of the Son is even greater than that of the Father. Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:408—The Person of Christ is in some respects more baffling to reason than the Trinity. Yet there is a profane neglect, as well as a profane curiosity:Col. 1:27—“the riches of the glory of this mystery ... which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”;2:2, 3—“the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden”;1 Tim. 3:16—“great is the mystery of godliness; He who was manifested in the flesh”—here the Vulgate, the Latin Fathers, and Buttmann make μυστήριον the antecedent of ὅς, the relative taking thenaturalgender of its antecedent, and μυστήριον referring to Christ;Heb. 2:11—“both he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one[not father, but race, or substance]”(cf.Acts 17:26—“he made of one every nation of men”)—an allusion to the solidarity of the race and Christ's participation in all that belongs to us.John 17:3—“this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him who thou didst send, even Jesus Christ”;20:27—“Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and put it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing”;Luke 24:39—“See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold me having”;Phil. 3:8, 10—“I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord ... that I may know him”;1 John 1:1—“that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life.”Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 254, 255—“Ranke said that Alexander was one of the few men in whom biography is identical with universal history. The words apply far better to Christ.”Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 267—“Religion being merely the personality of God, Christianity the personality of Christ.”Pascal:“Jesus Christ is the centre of everything and the object of everything, and he who does not know him knows nothing of the order of nature and nothing of himself.”Goethe in his last years wrote:“Humanity cannot take a retrograde step, and we may say that the Christian religion, now that it has once appeared, can never again disappear; now that it has once found a divine embodiment, cannot again be dissolved.”H. B. Smith, that man of clear and devout thought, put his whole doctrine into one sentence:“Let us come to Jesus,—the person of Christ is the centre of theology.”Dean Stanley never tired of[pg 692]quoting as his own Confession of Faith the words of John Bunyan:“Blest Cross—blest Sepulchre—blest rather he—The man who there was put to shame for me!”And Charles Wesley wrote on Catholic Love:“Weary of all this wordy strife, These motions, forms, and modes and names, To thee, the Way, the Truth, the Life, Whose love my simple heart inflames—Divinely taught, at last I fly, With thee and thine to live and die.”“We have two great lakes, named Erie and Ontario, and these are connected by the Niagara River through which Erie pours its waters into Ontario. The whole Christian Church throughout the ages has been called the overflow of Jesus Christ, who is infinitely greater than it. Let Lake Erie be the symbol of Christ, the pre-existent Logos, the Eternal Word, God revealed in the universe. Let Niagara River be a picture to us of this same Christ now confined to the narrow channel of His manifestation in the flesh, but within those limits showing the same eastward current and downward gravitation which men perceived so imperfectly before. The tremendous cataract, with its waters plunging into the abyss and shaking the very earth, is the suffering and death of the Son of God, which for the first time makes palpable to human hearts the forces of righteousness and love operative in the Divine nature from the beginning. The law of universal life has been made manifest; now it is seen that justice and judgment are the foundations of God's throne; that God's righteousness everywhere and always makes penalty to follow sin; that the love which creates and upholds sinners must itself be numbered with the transgressors, and must bear their iniquities. Niagara has demonstrated the gravitation of Lake Erie. And not in vain. For from Niagara there widens out another peaceful lake. Ontario is the offspring and likeness of Erie. So redeemed humanity is the overflow of Jesus Christ, but only of Jesus Christ after He has passed through the measureless self-abandonment of His earthly life and of His tragic death on Calvary. As the waters of Lake Ontario are ever fed by Niagara, so the Church draws its life from the cross. And Christ's purpose is, not that we should repeat Calvary, for that we can never do, but that we should reflect in ourselves the same onward movement and gravitation towards self-sacrifice which He has revealed as characterizing the very life of God”(A. H. Strong, Sermon before the Baptist World Congress, London, July 12, 1905).(b) The chief problems.—These problems are the following: 1. one personality and two natures; 2. human nature without personality; 3. relation of the Logos to the humanity during the earthly life of Christ; 4. relation of the humanity to the Logos during the heavenly life of Christ. We may throw light on 1, by the figure of two concentric circles; on 2, by remembering that two earthly parents unite in producing a single child; on 3, by the illustration of latent memory, which contains so much more than present recollection; on 4, by the thought that body is the manifestation of spirit, and that Christ in his heavenly state is not confined to place.Luther said that we should need“new tongues”before we could properly set forth this doctrine,—particularly a new language with regard to the nature of man. The further elucidation of the problems mentioned above will immediately occupy our attention. Our investigation should not be prejudiced by the fact that the divine element in Jesus Christ manifests itself within human limitations. This is the condition of all revelation.John 14:9—“he that hath seen me hath seen the father”;Col. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”= up to the measure of human capacity to receive and to express the divine.Heb. 2:11andActs 17:26both attribute to man a consubstantiality with Christ, and Christ is the manifested God. It is a law of hydrostatics that the smallest column of water will balance the largest. Lake Erie will be no higher than the water in the tube connected therewith. So the person of Christ reached the level of God, though limited in extent and environment. He was God manifest in the flesh.Robert Browning, Death in the Desert:“I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it, And has so far advanced thee to be wise”; Epilogue to Dramatis Personæ:“That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my Universe that feels and knows.”“That face,”said Browning to Mrs. Orr, as he finished reading the poem,“is the face of Christ. That is how I feel him.”This is his[pg 693]answer to those victims of nineteenth century scepticism for whom incarnate Love has disappeared from the universe, carrying with it the belief in God. He thus attests the continued presence of God in Christ, both in nature and humanity. On Browning as a Christian Poet, see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 373-447; S. Law Wilson, Theology of Modern Literature, 181-226.(c) Reason for mystery.—The union of the two natures in Christ's person is necessarily inscrutable, because there are no analogies to it in our experience. Attempts to illustrate it on the one hand from the union and yet the distinctness of soul and body, of iron and heat, and on the other hand from the union and yet the distinctness of Christ and the believer, of the divine Son and the Father, are one-sided and become utterly misleading, if they are regarded as furnishing a rationale of the union and not simply a means of repelling objection. The first two illustrations mentioned above lack the essential element of two natures to make them complete: soul and body are not two natures, but one, nor are iron and heat two substances. The last two illustrations mentioned above lack the element of single personality: Christ and the believer are two persons, not one, even as the Son and the Father are not one person, but two.The two illustrations most commonly employed are the union of soul and body, and the union of the believer with Christ. Each of these illustrates one side of the great doctrine, but each must be complemented by the other. The former, taken by itself, would be Eutychian; the latter, taken by itself, would be Nestorian. Like the doctrine of the Trinity, the Person of Christ is an absolutely unique fact, for which we can find no complete analogies. But neither do we know how soul and body are united. See Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Hypostasis; Sartorius, Person and Work of Christ, 27-65; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 39-77; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 281-334.A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 218, 230—“Many people are Unitarians, not because of the difficulties of the Trinity, but because of the difficulties of the Person of Christ.... The union of the two natures is not mechanical, as between oxygen and nitrogen in our air; nor chemical, as between oxygen and hydrogen in water; nor organic, as between our hearts and our brains; but personal. The best illustration is the union of body and soul in our own persons,—how perfectly joined they are in the great orator! Yet here are not two natures, but one human nature. We need therefore to add the illustration of the union between the believer and Christ.”And here too we must confess the imperfection of the analogy, for Christ and the believer are two persons, and not one. The person of the God-man is unique and without adequate parallel. But this constitutes its dignity and glory.(d) Ground of possibility.—The possibility of the union of deity and humanity in one person is grounded in the original creation of man in the divine image. Man's kinship to God, in other words, his possession of a rational and spiritual nature, is the condition of incarnation. Brute-life is incapable of union with God. But human nature is capable of the divine, in the sense not only that it lives, moves, and has its being in God, but that God may unite himself indissolubly to it and endue it with divine powers, while yet it remains all the more truly human. Since the moral image of God in human nature has been lost by sin, Christ, the perfect image of God after which man was originally made, restores that lost image by uniting himself to humanity and filling it with his divine life and love.2 Pet. 1:4—“partakers of the divine nature.”Creation and providence do not furnish the last limit of God's indwelling. Beyond these, there is the spiritual union between the believer and Christ, and even beyond this, there is the unity of God and man in the person of Jesus Christ. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:283 (Syst. Doct., 3:180)—“Humanity in Christ is related to divinity, as woman to man in marriage. It is receptive, but it is exalted by receiving. Christ is the offspring of the [marriage] covenant between God and Israel.”[pg 694]Ib., 2:403-411 (Syst. Doct., 3:301-308)—“The question is: How can Christ be both Creator and creature? The Logos, as such, stands over against the creature as a distinct object. How can he become, and be, that which exists only as object of his activity and inworking? Can the cause become its own effect? The problem is solved, only by remembering that the divine and human, though distinct from each other, are not to be thought of as foreign to each other and mutually exclusive. The very thing that distinguishes them binds them together. Their essential distinction is that God has aseity, while man has simply dependence.‘Deep calleth unto deep’(Ps. 42:7)—the deep of the divine riches, and the deep of human poverty, call to each other.‘From me a cry,—from him reply.’God's infinite resources and man's infinite need, God's measureless supply and man's boundless receptivity, attract each other, until they unite in him in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The mutual attraction is of an ethical sort, but the divine love has‘first loved’(1 John 4:19).“The new second creation is therefore not merely, like the first creation, one that distinguishes from God,—it is one that unites with God. Nature is distinct from God, yet God moves and works in nature. Much more does human nature find its only true reality, or realization, in union with God. God's uniting act does not violate or unmake it, but rather first causes it to be what, in God's idea, it was meant to be.”Incarnation is therefore the very fulfilment of the idea of humanity. The supernatural assumption of humanity is the most natural of all things. Man is not a mere tangent to God, but an empty vessel to be filled from the infinite fountain. Natura humana in Christo capax divinæ. See Talbot, in Bap. Quar., 1868:129; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 270.God could not have become an angel, or a tree, or a stone. But he could become man, because man was made in his image. God in man, as Phillips Brooks held, is the absolutely natural. Channing said that“all minds are of one family.”E. B. Andrews:“Divinity and humanity are not contradictory predicates. If this had been properly understood, there would have been no Unitarian movement. Man is in a true sense divine. This is also true of Christ. But he is infinitely further along in the divine nature than we are. If we say his divinity is a new kind, then the new kind arises out of the degree.”“Were not the eye itself a sun, No light for it could ever shine: By nothing godlike could the soul be won, Were not the soul itself divine.”John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:165—“A smaller circle may represent a larger in respect of its circularity; but a circle, small or large, cannot be the image of a square.”... 2:101—“God would not be God without union with man, and man would not be man without union with God. Immanent in the spirits he has made, he shares their pains and sorrows.... Showing the infinite element in man, Christ attracts us toward his own moral excellence.”Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 190—“Incarnation is the indwelling of God in his children, of which the type and pattern is seen in him who is at once the manifestation of God to man, and the revelation to men of what humanity is to be when God's work in the world is done—perfect God and perfect man, because God perfectly dwelling in a perfect man.”We have quoted these latter utterances, not because we regard them as admitting the full truth with regard to the union of the divine and human in Christ; but because they recognize the essential likeness of the human to the divine, and so help our understanding of the union between the two. We go further than the writers quoted, in maintaining not merely an indwelling of God in Christ, but an organic and essential union. Christ moreover is not the God-man by virtue of his possessing a larger measure of the divine than we, but rather by being the original source of all life, both human and divine. We hold to his deity as well as to his divinity, as some of these authors apparently do not. SeeHeb. 7:15, 16—“another priest, who hath been made ... after the power of an endless life”;John 1:4—“In him was life; and the life was the light of men.”(e) No double personality.—This possession of two natures does not involve a double personality in the God-man, for the reason that the Logos takes into union with himself, not an individual man with already developed personality, but human nature which has had no separate existence before its union with the divine. Christ's human nature is impersonal, in the sense that it attains self-consciousness, and self-determination only in the personality of the God-man. Here it is important to mark the distinction between nature and person. Nature is substance possessed in[pg 695]common; the persons of the Trinity have one nature; there is a common nature of mankind. Person is nature separately subsisting, with powers of consciousness and will. Since the human nature of Christ has not and never had a separate subsistence, it is impersonal, and in the God-man the Logos furnishes the principle of personality. It is equally important to observe that self-consciousness and self-determination do not belong to nature as such, but only to personality. For this reason, Christ has not two consciousnesses and two wills, but a single consciousness and a single will. This consciousness and will, moreover, is never simply human, but is always theanthropic—an activity of the one personality which unites in itself the human and the divine (Mark 13:32; Luke 22:42).The human father and the human mother are distinct persons, and they each give something of their own peculiar nature to their child; yet the result is, not two persons in the child, but only one person, with one consciousness and one will. So the Fatherhood of God and the motherhood of Mary produced not a double personality in Christ, but a single personality. Dorner illustrates the union of human and divine in Jesus by theHoly Spiritin the Christian,—nothing foreign, nothing distinguishable from the human life into which it enters; and by themoral sense, which is the very presence and power of God in the human soul,—yet conscience does not break up the unity of the life; see C. C. Everett, Essays, 32. These illustrations help us to understand the interpenetration of the human by the divine in Jesus; but they are defective in suggesting that his relation to God was different from ours not in kind but only in degree. Only Jesus could say:“Before Abraham was born, I am”(John 8:58);“I and the Father are one”(John 10:30).The theory of two consciousnesses and two wills, first elaborated by John of Damascus, was an unwarranted addition to the orthodox doctrine propounded at Chalcedon. Although the view of John of Damascus was sanctioned by the Council of Constantinople (681),“this Council has never been regarded by the Greek Church as œcumenical, and its composition and spirit deprive its decisions of all value as indicating the true sense of Scripture”; see Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 90.Naturehas consciousness and will, only as it is manifested inperson. The one person has a single consciousness and will, which embraces within its scope at all times a human nature, and sometimes a divine. Notice that we do not say Christ's human nature had no will, but only that it had none before its union with the divine nature, and none separately from the one will which was made up of the human and the divine united;versusCurrent Discussions in Theology, 5:283.Sartorius uses the illustration of two concentric circles: the one ego of personality in Christ is at the same time the centre of both circles, the human nature and the divine. Or, still better, illustrate by a smaller vessel of air inverted and sunk, sometimes below its centre, sometimes above, in a far larger vessel of water. SeeMark 13:32—“of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son”;Luke 22:42—“Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”To say that, although in his capacity as man he was ignorant, yet at that same moment in his capacity as God he was omniscient, is to accuse Christ of unveracity. Whenever Christ spoke, it was not one of the natures that spoke, but the person in whom both natures were united.We subjoin various definitions of personality: Boëthius, quoted in Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:415 (Syst. Doct., 3:313)—“Persona est animæ rationalis individua substantia”; F. W. Robertson, Lect. on Gen., p. 3—“Personality = self-consciousness, will, character”; Porter, Human Intellect, 626—“Personality = distinct subsistence, either actually or latently self-conscious and self-determining”; Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 408—“Person = being, conscious of self, subsisting in individuality and identity, and endowed with intuitive reason, rational sensibility, and free-will.”Dr. E. G. Robinson defines“nature”as“that substratum or condition of being which determines the kind and attributes of the person, but which is clearly distinguishable from the person itself.”Lotze, Metaphysics, § 244—“The identity of the subject of inward experience is all that we require. So far as, and so long as, the soul knows itself as this identical subject, it is and is named, simply for that reason, substance.”Illingworth, Personality, Human[pg 696]and Divine, 32—“Our conception of substance is not derived from the physical, but from the mental, world. Substance is first of all that which underlies our mental affections and manifestations. Kant declared that the idea of freedom is the source of our idea of personality. Personality consists in the freedom of the whole soul from the mechanism of nature.”On personality, see Windelband, Hist. Philos., 238. For the theory of two consciousnesses and two wills, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:129, 234; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2:314; Ridgeley, Body of Divinity, 1:476; Hodge, Syst Theol., 2:378-391; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:289-308, esp. 328.Per contra, see Hovey, God with Us, 66; Schaff, Church Hist., 1:757, and 3:751; Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 12-14; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 148-169; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 512-518.(f) Effect upon the human.—The union of the divine and the human natures makes the latter possessed of the powers belonging to the former; in other words, the attributes of the divine nature are imparted to the human without passing over into its essence,—so that the human Christ even on earth had power to be, to know, and to do, as God. That this power was latent, or was only rarely manifested, was the result of the self-chosen state of humiliation upon which the God-man had entered. In this state of humiliation, the communication of the contents of his divine nature to the human was mediated by the Holy Spirit. The God-man, in his servant-form, knew and taught and performed only what the Spirit permitted and directed (Mat. 3:16; John 3:34; Acts 1:2; 10:38; Heb. 9:14). But when thus permitted, he knew, taught, and performed, not, like the prophets, by power communicated from without, but by virtue of his own inner divine energy (Mat. 17:2; Mark 5:41; Luke 5:20, 21; 6:19; John 2:11, 24, 25; 3:13; 20:19).Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2d ed., 2:77—“Human nature does not become divine, but (as Chemnitz has said) only the medium of the divine; as the moon has not a light of her own, but only shines in the light of the sun. So human nature may derivatively exercise divine attributes, because it is united to the divine in one person.”Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 151—“Our souls spiritualize our bodies, and will one day give us the spiritual body, while yet the body does not become spirit. So the Godhead gives divine powers to the humanity in Christ, while yet the humanity does not cease to be humanity.”Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:131—“The union exalts the human, as light brightens the air, heat gives glow to the iron, spirit exalts the body, the Holy Spirit hallows the believer by union with his soul. Fire gives to iron its own properties of lighting and burning; yet the iron does not become fire. Soul gives to body its life-energy; yet the body does not become soul. The Holy Spirit sanctifies the believer, but the believer does not become divine; for the divine principle is the determining one. We do not speak of airy light, of iron heat, or of a bodily soul. So human nature possesses the divine only derivatively. In this sense it isourdestiny to become‘partakers of the divine nature’(2 Pet. 1:4). Even in his earthly life, when he wished to be, or more correctly, when the Spirit permitted, he was omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, could walk the sea, or pass through closed doors. But, in his state of humiliation, he was subject to the Holy Spirit.”InMat. 3:16, the anointing of the Spirit at his baptism was not the descent of a material dove (“as a dove”). The dove-like appearance was only the outward sign of the coming forth of the Holy Spirit from the depths of his being and pouring itself like a flood into his divine-human consciousness.John 3:34—“for he giveth not the Spirit by measure”;Acts 1:2—“after that he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit unto the apostles”;10:38—“Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him”;Heb, 9:14—“the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish onto God.”When permitted by the Holy Spirit, he knew, taught, and wrought as God:Mat. 17:2—“he was transfigured before them”;Mark 5:41—“Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise”;Luke 5:20, 21—“Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.... Who can forgive sins, but God alone?”—Luke 6:19—“power came forth from him, and healed them all”;John 2:11—“This beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory”;24, 25—“he knew all men.... he himself knew what was in man”;3:13—“the Son of man, who is[pg 697]in heaven”[here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἔν τῷ ὀυρανῷ,—for advocacy of the common reading, see Broadus, in Hovey's Com., onJohn 3:13];20:19—“when the doors were shut ... Jesus came and stood in the midst.”Christ is the“servant of Jehovah”(Is. 42:1-7; 49:1-12; 52:13; 53:11) and the meaning of παῖς (Acts 3:13, 28; 4:27, 30) is not“child”or“Son”; it is“servant,”as in the Revised Version. But, in the state of exaltation, Christ is the“Lord of the Spirit”(2 Cor. 3:18—Meyer), giving the Spirit (John 16:7—“I will send him unto you”), present in the Spirit (John 14:18—“I come unto you”;Mat. 28:20—“I am with you always, even unto the the end of the world”), and working through the Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45—“The last Adam became a life-giving spirit”);2 Cor. 3:17—“Now the Lord is the Spirit”. On Christ's relation to the Holy Spirit, see John Owen, Works, 282-297; Robins, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1874:615; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 208-241.Delitzsch:“The conception of the servant of Jehovah is, as it were, a pyramid, of which the base is the people of Israel as a whole; the central part, Israel according to the Spirit; and the summit, the Mediator of Salvation who rises out of Israel.”Cheyne on Isaiah, 2:253, agrees with this view of Delitzsch, which is also the view of Oehler. The O. T. is the life of a nation; the N. T. is the life of a man. The chief end of the nation was to produce the man; the chief end of the man was to save the world. Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 59—“If humanity were not potentially and in some degree an Immanuel, God with us, there would never have issued from its bosom he who bore and revealed this blessed name.”We would enlarge and amend this illustration of the pyramid, by making the base to be the Logos, as Creator and Upholder of all (Eph. 1:23;Col. 1:16); the stratum which rests next upon the Logos is universal humanity (Ps, 8:5, 6); then comes Israel as a whole (Mat. 2:15); spiritual Israel rests upon Israel after the flesh (Is. 42:1-7); as the acme and cap stone of all, Christ appears, to crown the pyramid, the true servant of Jehovah and Son of man (Is. 53:11;Mat. 20:28). We may go even further and represent Christ as forming the basis of another inverted pyramid of redeemed humanity ever growing and rising to heaven (Is. 9:6—“Everlasting Father”;Is. 53:10—“he shall see his seed”;Rev. 22:16—“root and offspring of David”;Heb. 2:13—“I and the children whom God hath given me.”)(g) Effect upon the divine.—This communion of the natures was such that, although the divine nature in itself is incapable of ignorance, weakness, temptation, suffering, or death, the one person Jesus Christ was capable of these by virtue of the union of the divine nature with a human nature in him. As the human Savior can exercise divine attributes, not in virtue of his humanity alone, but derivatively, by virtue of his possession of a divine nature, so the divine Savior can suffer and be ignorant as man, not in his divine nature, but derivatively, by virtue of his possession of a human nature. We may illustrate this from the connection between body and soul. The soul suffers pain from its union with the body, of which apart from the body it would be incapable. So the God-man, although in his divine nature impassible, was capable, through his union with humanity, of absolutely infinite suffering.

(a) Its great importance.—While the Scriptures represent the person of Christ as the crowning mystery of the Christian scheme (Matt 11:27; Col. 1:27; 2:2; 1 Tim. 3:16), they also incite us to its study (John 17:3; 20:27; Luke 24:39; Phil. 3:8, 10). This is the more needful, since Christ is not only the central point of Christianity, but is Christianity itself—the embodied reconciliation and union between man and God. The following remarks are offered, not as fully explaining, but only as in some respects relieving, the difficulties of the subject.

Matt. 11:27—“no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.”Here it seems to be intimated that the mystery of the nature of the Son is even greater than that of the Father. Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:408—The Person of Christ is in some respects more baffling to reason than the Trinity. Yet there is a profane neglect, as well as a profane curiosity:Col. 1:27—“the riches of the glory of this mystery ... which is Christ in you, the hope of glory”;2:2, 3—“the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden”;1 Tim. 3:16—“great is the mystery of godliness; He who was manifested in the flesh”—here the Vulgate, the Latin Fathers, and Buttmann make μυστήριον the antecedent of ὅς, the relative taking thenaturalgender of its antecedent, and μυστήριον referring to Christ;Heb. 2:11—“both he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one[not father, but race, or substance]”(cf.Acts 17:26—“he made of one every nation of men”)—an allusion to the solidarity of the race and Christ's participation in all that belongs to us.John 17:3—“this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him who thou didst send, even Jesus Christ”;20:27—“Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and put it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing”;Luke 24:39—“See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold me having”;Phil. 3:8, 10—“I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord ... that I may know him”;1 John 1:1—“that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life.”Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 254, 255—“Ranke said that Alexander was one of the few men in whom biography is identical with universal history. The words apply far better to Christ.”Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 267—“Religion being merely the personality of God, Christianity the personality of Christ.”Pascal:“Jesus Christ is the centre of everything and the object of everything, and he who does not know him knows nothing of the order of nature and nothing of himself.”Goethe in his last years wrote:“Humanity cannot take a retrograde step, and we may say that the Christian religion, now that it has once appeared, can never again disappear; now that it has once found a divine embodiment, cannot again be dissolved.”H. B. Smith, that man of clear and devout thought, put his whole doctrine into one sentence:“Let us come to Jesus,—the person of Christ is the centre of theology.”Dean Stanley never tired of[pg 692]quoting as his own Confession of Faith the words of John Bunyan:“Blest Cross—blest Sepulchre—blest rather he—The man who there was put to shame for me!”And Charles Wesley wrote on Catholic Love:“Weary of all this wordy strife, These motions, forms, and modes and names, To thee, the Way, the Truth, the Life, Whose love my simple heart inflames—Divinely taught, at last I fly, With thee and thine to live and die.”“We have two great lakes, named Erie and Ontario, and these are connected by the Niagara River through which Erie pours its waters into Ontario. The whole Christian Church throughout the ages has been called the overflow of Jesus Christ, who is infinitely greater than it. Let Lake Erie be the symbol of Christ, the pre-existent Logos, the Eternal Word, God revealed in the universe. Let Niagara River be a picture to us of this same Christ now confined to the narrow channel of His manifestation in the flesh, but within those limits showing the same eastward current and downward gravitation which men perceived so imperfectly before. The tremendous cataract, with its waters plunging into the abyss and shaking the very earth, is the suffering and death of the Son of God, which for the first time makes palpable to human hearts the forces of righteousness and love operative in the Divine nature from the beginning. The law of universal life has been made manifest; now it is seen that justice and judgment are the foundations of God's throne; that God's righteousness everywhere and always makes penalty to follow sin; that the love which creates and upholds sinners must itself be numbered with the transgressors, and must bear their iniquities. Niagara has demonstrated the gravitation of Lake Erie. And not in vain. For from Niagara there widens out another peaceful lake. Ontario is the offspring and likeness of Erie. So redeemed humanity is the overflow of Jesus Christ, but only of Jesus Christ after He has passed through the measureless self-abandonment of His earthly life and of His tragic death on Calvary. As the waters of Lake Ontario are ever fed by Niagara, so the Church draws its life from the cross. And Christ's purpose is, not that we should repeat Calvary, for that we can never do, but that we should reflect in ourselves the same onward movement and gravitation towards self-sacrifice which He has revealed as characterizing the very life of God”(A. H. Strong, Sermon before the Baptist World Congress, London, July 12, 1905).

John 17:3—“this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him who thou didst send, even Jesus Christ”;20:27—“Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and put it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing”;Luke 24:39—“See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold me having”;Phil. 3:8, 10—“I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord ... that I may know him”;1 John 1:1—“that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life.”

Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 254, 255—“Ranke said that Alexander was one of the few men in whom biography is identical with universal history. The words apply far better to Christ.”Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 267—“Religion being merely the personality of God, Christianity the personality of Christ.”Pascal:“Jesus Christ is the centre of everything and the object of everything, and he who does not know him knows nothing of the order of nature and nothing of himself.”Goethe in his last years wrote:“Humanity cannot take a retrograde step, and we may say that the Christian religion, now that it has once appeared, can never again disappear; now that it has once found a divine embodiment, cannot again be dissolved.”H. B. Smith, that man of clear and devout thought, put his whole doctrine into one sentence:“Let us come to Jesus,—the person of Christ is the centre of theology.”Dean Stanley never tired of[pg 692]quoting as his own Confession of Faith the words of John Bunyan:“Blest Cross—blest Sepulchre—blest rather he—The man who there was put to shame for me!”And Charles Wesley wrote on Catholic Love:“Weary of all this wordy strife, These motions, forms, and modes and names, To thee, the Way, the Truth, the Life, Whose love my simple heart inflames—Divinely taught, at last I fly, With thee and thine to live and die.”

“We have two great lakes, named Erie and Ontario, and these are connected by the Niagara River through which Erie pours its waters into Ontario. The whole Christian Church throughout the ages has been called the overflow of Jesus Christ, who is infinitely greater than it. Let Lake Erie be the symbol of Christ, the pre-existent Logos, the Eternal Word, God revealed in the universe. Let Niagara River be a picture to us of this same Christ now confined to the narrow channel of His manifestation in the flesh, but within those limits showing the same eastward current and downward gravitation which men perceived so imperfectly before. The tremendous cataract, with its waters plunging into the abyss and shaking the very earth, is the suffering and death of the Son of God, which for the first time makes palpable to human hearts the forces of righteousness and love operative in the Divine nature from the beginning. The law of universal life has been made manifest; now it is seen that justice and judgment are the foundations of God's throne; that God's righteousness everywhere and always makes penalty to follow sin; that the love which creates and upholds sinners must itself be numbered with the transgressors, and must bear their iniquities. Niagara has demonstrated the gravitation of Lake Erie. And not in vain. For from Niagara there widens out another peaceful lake. Ontario is the offspring and likeness of Erie. So redeemed humanity is the overflow of Jesus Christ, but only of Jesus Christ after He has passed through the measureless self-abandonment of His earthly life and of His tragic death on Calvary. As the waters of Lake Ontario are ever fed by Niagara, so the Church draws its life from the cross. And Christ's purpose is, not that we should repeat Calvary, for that we can never do, but that we should reflect in ourselves the same onward movement and gravitation towards self-sacrifice which He has revealed as characterizing the very life of God”(A. H. Strong, Sermon before the Baptist World Congress, London, July 12, 1905).

(b) The chief problems.—These problems are the following: 1. one personality and two natures; 2. human nature without personality; 3. relation of the Logos to the humanity during the earthly life of Christ; 4. relation of the humanity to the Logos during the heavenly life of Christ. We may throw light on 1, by the figure of two concentric circles; on 2, by remembering that two earthly parents unite in producing a single child; on 3, by the illustration of latent memory, which contains so much more than present recollection; on 4, by the thought that body is the manifestation of spirit, and that Christ in his heavenly state is not confined to place.

Luther said that we should need“new tongues”before we could properly set forth this doctrine,—particularly a new language with regard to the nature of man. The further elucidation of the problems mentioned above will immediately occupy our attention. Our investigation should not be prejudiced by the fact that the divine element in Jesus Christ manifests itself within human limitations. This is the condition of all revelation.John 14:9—“he that hath seen me hath seen the father”;Col. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”= up to the measure of human capacity to receive and to express the divine.Heb. 2:11andActs 17:26both attribute to man a consubstantiality with Christ, and Christ is the manifested God. It is a law of hydrostatics that the smallest column of water will balance the largest. Lake Erie will be no higher than the water in the tube connected therewith. So the person of Christ reached the level of God, though limited in extent and environment. He was God manifest in the flesh.Robert Browning, Death in the Desert:“I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it, And has so far advanced thee to be wise”; Epilogue to Dramatis Personæ:“That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my Universe that feels and knows.”“That face,”said Browning to Mrs. Orr, as he finished reading the poem,“is the face of Christ. That is how I feel him.”This is his[pg 693]answer to those victims of nineteenth century scepticism for whom incarnate Love has disappeared from the universe, carrying with it the belief in God. He thus attests the continued presence of God in Christ, both in nature and humanity. On Browning as a Christian Poet, see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 373-447; S. Law Wilson, Theology of Modern Literature, 181-226.

Robert Browning, Death in the Desert:“I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it, And has so far advanced thee to be wise”; Epilogue to Dramatis Personæ:“That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my Universe that feels and knows.”“That face,”said Browning to Mrs. Orr, as he finished reading the poem,“is the face of Christ. That is how I feel him.”This is his[pg 693]answer to those victims of nineteenth century scepticism for whom incarnate Love has disappeared from the universe, carrying with it the belief in God. He thus attests the continued presence of God in Christ, both in nature and humanity. On Browning as a Christian Poet, see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 373-447; S. Law Wilson, Theology of Modern Literature, 181-226.

(c) Reason for mystery.—The union of the two natures in Christ's person is necessarily inscrutable, because there are no analogies to it in our experience. Attempts to illustrate it on the one hand from the union and yet the distinctness of soul and body, of iron and heat, and on the other hand from the union and yet the distinctness of Christ and the believer, of the divine Son and the Father, are one-sided and become utterly misleading, if they are regarded as furnishing a rationale of the union and not simply a means of repelling objection. The first two illustrations mentioned above lack the essential element of two natures to make them complete: soul and body are not two natures, but one, nor are iron and heat two substances. The last two illustrations mentioned above lack the element of single personality: Christ and the believer are two persons, not one, even as the Son and the Father are not one person, but two.

The two illustrations most commonly employed are the union of soul and body, and the union of the believer with Christ. Each of these illustrates one side of the great doctrine, but each must be complemented by the other. The former, taken by itself, would be Eutychian; the latter, taken by itself, would be Nestorian. Like the doctrine of the Trinity, the Person of Christ is an absolutely unique fact, for which we can find no complete analogies. But neither do we know how soul and body are united. See Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Hypostasis; Sartorius, Person and Work of Christ, 27-65; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 39-77; Luthardt, Fund. Truths, 281-334.A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 218, 230—“Many people are Unitarians, not because of the difficulties of the Trinity, but because of the difficulties of the Person of Christ.... The union of the two natures is not mechanical, as between oxygen and nitrogen in our air; nor chemical, as between oxygen and hydrogen in water; nor organic, as between our hearts and our brains; but personal. The best illustration is the union of body and soul in our own persons,—how perfectly joined they are in the great orator! Yet here are not two natures, but one human nature. We need therefore to add the illustration of the union between the believer and Christ.”And here too we must confess the imperfection of the analogy, for Christ and the believer are two persons, and not one. The person of the God-man is unique and without adequate parallel. But this constitutes its dignity and glory.

A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 218, 230—“Many people are Unitarians, not because of the difficulties of the Trinity, but because of the difficulties of the Person of Christ.... The union of the two natures is not mechanical, as between oxygen and nitrogen in our air; nor chemical, as between oxygen and hydrogen in water; nor organic, as between our hearts and our brains; but personal. The best illustration is the union of body and soul in our own persons,—how perfectly joined they are in the great orator! Yet here are not two natures, but one human nature. We need therefore to add the illustration of the union between the believer and Christ.”And here too we must confess the imperfection of the analogy, for Christ and the believer are two persons, and not one. The person of the God-man is unique and without adequate parallel. But this constitutes its dignity and glory.

(d) Ground of possibility.—The possibility of the union of deity and humanity in one person is grounded in the original creation of man in the divine image. Man's kinship to God, in other words, his possession of a rational and spiritual nature, is the condition of incarnation. Brute-life is incapable of union with God. But human nature is capable of the divine, in the sense not only that it lives, moves, and has its being in God, but that God may unite himself indissolubly to it and endue it with divine powers, while yet it remains all the more truly human. Since the moral image of God in human nature has been lost by sin, Christ, the perfect image of God after which man was originally made, restores that lost image by uniting himself to humanity and filling it with his divine life and love.

2 Pet. 1:4—“partakers of the divine nature.”Creation and providence do not furnish the last limit of God's indwelling. Beyond these, there is the spiritual union between the believer and Christ, and even beyond this, there is the unity of God and man in the person of Jesus Christ. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:283 (Syst. Doct., 3:180)—“Humanity in Christ is related to divinity, as woman to man in marriage. It is receptive, but it is exalted by receiving. Christ is the offspring of the [marriage] covenant between God and Israel.”[pg 694]Ib., 2:403-411 (Syst. Doct., 3:301-308)—“The question is: How can Christ be both Creator and creature? The Logos, as such, stands over against the creature as a distinct object. How can he become, and be, that which exists only as object of his activity and inworking? Can the cause become its own effect? The problem is solved, only by remembering that the divine and human, though distinct from each other, are not to be thought of as foreign to each other and mutually exclusive. The very thing that distinguishes them binds them together. Their essential distinction is that God has aseity, while man has simply dependence.‘Deep calleth unto deep’(Ps. 42:7)—the deep of the divine riches, and the deep of human poverty, call to each other.‘From me a cry,—from him reply.’God's infinite resources and man's infinite need, God's measureless supply and man's boundless receptivity, attract each other, until they unite in him in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The mutual attraction is of an ethical sort, but the divine love has‘first loved’(1 John 4:19).“The new second creation is therefore not merely, like the first creation, one that distinguishes from God,—it is one that unites with God. Nature is distinct from God, yet God moves and works in nature. Much more does human nature find its only true reality, or realization, in union with God. God's uniting act does not violate or unmake it, but rather first causes it to be what, in God's idea, it was meant to be.”Incarnation is therefore the very fulfilment of the idea of humanity. The supernatural assumption of humanity is the most natural of all things. Man is not a mere tangent to God, but an empty vessel to be filled from the infinite fountain. Natura humana in Christo capax divinæ. See Talbot, in Bap. Quar., 1868:129; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 270.God could not have become an angel, or a tree, or a stone. But he could become man, because man was made in his image. God in man, as Phillips Brooks held, is the absolutely natural. Channing said that“all minds are of one family.”E. B. Andrews:“Divinity and humanity are not contradictory predicates. If this had been properly understood, there would have been no Unitarian movement. Man is in a true sense divine. This is also true of Christ. But he is infinitely further along in the divine nature than we are. If we say his divinity is a new kind, then the new kind arises out of the degree.”“Were not the eye itself a sun, No light for it could ever shine: By nothing godlike could the soul be won, Were not the soul itself divine.”John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:165—“A smaller circle may represent a larger in respect of its circularity; but a circle, small or large, cannot be the image of a square.”... 2:101—“God would not be God without union with man, and man would not be man without union with God. Immanent in the spirits he has made, he shares their pains and sorrows.... Showing the infinite element in man, Christ attracts us toward his own moral excellence.”Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 190—“Incarnation is the indwelling of God in his children, of which the type and pattern is seen in him who is at once the manifestation of God to man, and the revelation to men of what humanity is to be when God's work in the world is done—perfect God and perfect man, because God perfectly dwelling in a perfect man.”We have quoted these latter utterances, not because we regard them as admitting the full truth with regard to the union of the divine and human in Christ; but because they recognize the essential likeness of the human to the divine, and so help our understanding of the union between the two. We go further than the writers quoted, in maintaining not merely an indwelling of God in Christ, but an organic and essential union. Christ moreover is not the God-man by virtue of his possessing a larger measure of the divine than we, but rather by being the original source of all life, both human and divine. We hold to his deity as well as to his divinity, as some of these authors apparently do not. SeeHeb. 7:15, 16—“another priest, who hath been made ... after the power of an endless life”;John 1:4—“In him was life; and the life was the light of men.”

“The new second creation is therefore not merely, like the first creation, one that distinguishes from God,—it is one that unites with God. Nature is distinct from God, yet God moves and works in nature. Much more does human nature find its only true reality, or realization, in union with God. God's uniting act does not violate or unmake it, but rather first causes it to be what, in God's idea, it was meant to be.”Incarnation is therefore the very fulfilment of the idea of humanity. The supernatural assumption of humanity is the most natural of all things. Man is not a mere tangent to God, but an empty vessel to be filled from the infinite fountain. Natura humana in Christo capax divinæ. See Talbot, in Bap. Quar., 1868:129; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 270.

God could not have become an angel, or a tree, or a stone. But he could become man, because man was made in his image. God in man, as Phillips Brooks held, is the absolutely natural. Channing said that“all minds are of one family.”E. B. Andrews:“Divinity and humanity are not contradictory predicates. If this had been properly understood, there would have been no Unitarian movement. Man is in a true sense divine. This is also true of Christ. But he is infinitely further along in the divine nature than we are. If we say his divinity is a new kind, then the new kind arises out of the degree.”“Were not the eye itself a sun, No light for it could ever shine: By nothing godlike could the soul be won, Were not the soul itself divine.”

John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:165—“A smaller circle may represent a larger in respect of its circularity; but a circle, small or large, cannot be the image of a square.”... 2:101—“God would not be God without union with man, and man would not be man without union with God. Immanent in the spirits he has made, he shares their pains and sorrows.... Showing the infinite element in man, Christ attracts us toward his own moral excellence.”Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 190—“Incarnation is the indwelling of God in his children, of which the type and pattern is seen in him who is at once the manifestation of God to man, and the revelation to men of what humanity is to be when God's work in the world is done—perfect God and perfect man, because God perfectly dwelling in a perfect man.”

We have quoted these latter utterances, not because we regard them as admitting the full truth with regard to the union of the divine and human in Christ; but because they recognize the essential likeness of the human to the divine, and so help our understanding of the union between the two. We go further than the writers quoted, in maintaining not merely an indwelling of God in Christ, but an organic and essential union. Christ moreover is not the God-man by virtue of his possessing a larger measure of the divine than we, but rather by being the original source of all life, both human and divine. We hold to his deity as well as to his divinity, as some of these authors apparently do not. SeeHeb. 7:15, 16—“another priest, who hath been made ... after the power of an endless life”;John 1:4—“In him was life; and the life was the light of men.”

(e) No double personality.—This possession of two natures does not involve a double personality in the God-man, for the reason that the Logos takes into union with himself, not an individual man with already developed personality, but human nature which has had no separate existence before its union with the divine. Christ's human nature is impersonal, in the sense that it attains self-consciousness, and self-determination only in the personality of the God-man. Here it is important to mark the distinction between nature and person. Nature is substance possessed in[pg 695]common; the persons of the Trinity have one nature; there is a common nature of mankind. Person is nature separately subsisting, with powers of consciousness and will. Since the human nature of Christ has not and never had a separate subsistence, it is impersonal, and in the God-man the Logos furnishes the principle of personality. It is equally important to observe that self-consciousness and self-determination do not belong to nature as such, but only to personality. For this reason, Christ has not two consciousnesses and two wills, but a single consciousness and a single will. This consciousness and will, moreover, is never simply human, but is always theanthropic—an activity of the one personality which unites in itself the human and the divine (Mark 13:32; Luke 22:42).

The human father and the human mother are distinct persons, and they each give something of their own peculiar nature to their child; yet the result is, not two persons in the child, but only one person, with one consciousness and one will. So the Fatherhood of God and the motherhood of Mary produced not a double personality in Christ, but a single personality. Dorner illustrates the union of human and divine in Jesus by theHoly Spiritin the Christian,—nothing foreign, nothing distinguishable from the human life into which it enters; and by themoral sense, which is the very presence and power of God in the human soul,—yet conscience does not break up the unity of the life; see C. C. Everett, Essays, 32. These illustrations help us to understand the interpenetration of the human by the divine in Jesus; but they are defective in suggesting that his relation to God was different from ours not in kind but only in degree. Only Jesus could say:“Before Abraham was born, I am”(John 8:58);“I and the Father are one”(John 10:30).The theory of two consciousnesses and two wills, first elaborated by John of Damascus, was an unwarranted addition to the orthodox doctrine propounded at Chalcedon. Although the view of John of Damascus was sanctioned by the Council of Constantinople (681),“this Council has never been regarded by the Greek Church as œcumenical, and its composition and spirit deprive its decisions of all value as indicating the true sense of Scripture”; see Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 90.Naturehas consciousness and will, only as it is manifested inperson. The one person has a single consciousness and will, which embraces within its scope at all times a human nature, and sometimes a divine. Notice that we do not say Christ's human nature had no will, but only that it had none before its union with the divine nature, and none separately from the one will which was made up of the human and the divine united;versusCurrent Discussions in Theology, 5:283.Sartorius uses the illustration of two concentric circles: the one ego of personality in Christ is at the same time the centre of both circles, the human nature and the divine. Or, still better, illustrate by a smaller vessel of air inverted and sunk, sometimes below its centre, sometimes above, in a far larger vessel of water. SeeMark 13:32—“of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son”;Luke 22:42—“Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”To say that, although in his capacity as man he was ignorant, yet at that same moment in his capacity as God he was omniscient, is to accuse Christ of unveracity. Whenever Christ spoke, it was not one of the natures that spoke, but the person in whom both natures were united.We subjoin various definitions of personality: Boëthius, quoted in Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:415 (Syst. Doct., 3:313)—“Persona est animæ rationalis individua substantia”; F. W. Robertson, Lect. on Gen., p. 3—“Personality = self-consciousness, will, character”; Porter, Human Intellect, 626—“Personality = distinct subsistence, either actually or latently self-conscious and self-determining”; Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 408—“Person = being, conscious of self, subsisting in individuality and identity, and endowed with intuitive reason, rational sensibility, and free-will.”Dr. E. G. Robinson defines“nature”as“that substratum or condition of being which determines the kind and attributes of the person, but which is clearly distinguishable from the person itself.”Lotze, Metaphysics, § 244—“The identity of the subject of inward experience is all that we require. So far as, and so long as, the soul knows itself as this identical subject, it is and is named, simply for that reason, substance.”Illingworth, Personality, Human[pg 696]and Divine, 32—“Our conception of substance is not derived from the physical, but from the mental, world. Substance is first of all that which underlies our mental affections and manifestations. Kant declared that the idea of freedom is the source of our idea of personality. Personality consists in the freedom of the whole soul from the mechanism of nature.”On personality, see Windelband, Hist. Philos., 238. For the theory of two consciousnesses and two wills, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:129, 234; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2:314; Ridgeley, Body of Divinity, 1:476; Hodge, Syst Theol., 2:378-391; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:289-308, esp. 328.Per contra, see Hovey, God with Us, 66; Schaff, Church Hist., 1:757, and 3:751; Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 12-14; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 148-169; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 512-518.

The theory of two consciousnesses and two wills, first elaborated by John of Damascus, was an unwarranted addition to the orthodox doctrine propounded at Chalcedon. Although the view of John of Damascus was sanctioned by the Council of Constantinople (681),“this Council has never been regarded by the Greek Church as œcumenical, and its composition and spirit deprive its decisions of all value as indicating the true sense of Scripture”; see Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 90.Naturehas consciousness and will, only as it is manifested inperson. The one person has a single consciousness and will, which embraces within its scope at all times a human nature, and sometimes a divine. Notice that we do not say Christ's human nature had no will, but only that it had none before its union with the divine nature, and none separately from the one will which was made up of the human and the divine united;versusCurrent Discussions in Theology, 5:283.

Sartorius uses the illustration of two concentric circles: the one ego of personality in Christ is at the same time the centre of both circles, the human nature and the divine. Or, still better, illustrate by a smaller vessel of air inverted and sunk, sometimes below its centre, sometimes above, in a far larger vessel of water. SeeMark 13:32—“of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son”;Luke 22:42—“Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”To say that, although in his capacity as man he was ignorant, yet at that same moment in his capacity as God he was omniscient, is to accuse Christ of unveracity. Whenever Christ spoke, it was not one of the natures that spoke, but the person in whom both natures were united.

We subjoin various definitions of personality: Boëthius, quoted in Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:415 (Syst. Doct., 3:313)—“Persona est animæ rationalis individua substantia”; F. W. Robertson, Lect. on Gen., p. 3—“Personality = self-consciousness, will, character”; Porter, Human Intellect, 626—“Personality = distinct subsistence, either actually or latently self-conscious and self-determining”; Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 408—“Person = being, conscious of self, subsisting in individuality and identity, and endowed with intuitive reason, rational sensibility, and free-will.”Dr. E. G. Robinson defines“nature”as“that substratum or condition of being which determines the kind and attributes of the person, but which is clearly distinguishable from the person itself.”

Lotze, Metaphysics, § 244—“The identity of the subject of inward experience is all that we require. So far as, and so long as, the soul knows itself as this identical subject, it is and is named, simply for that reason, substance.”Illingworth, Personality, Human[pg 696]and Divine, 32—“Our conception of substance is not derived from the physical, but from the mental, world. Substance is first of all that which underlies our mental affections and manifestations. Kant declared that the idea of freedom is the source of our idea of personality. Personality consists in the freedom of the whole soul from the mechanism of nature.”On personality, see Windelband, Hist. Philos., 238. For the theory of two consciousnesses and two wills, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:129, 234; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2:314; Ridgeley, Body of Divinity, 1:476; Hodge, Syst Theol., 2:378-391; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:289-308, esp. 328.Per contra, see Hovey, God with Us, 66; Schaff, Church Hist., 1:757, and 3:751; Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 12-14; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 148-169; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 512-518.

(f) Effect upon the human.—The union of the divine and the human natures makes the latter possessed of the powers belonging to the former; in other words, the attributes of the divine nature are imparted to the human without passing over into its essence,—so that the human Christ even on earth had power to be, to know, and to do, as God. That this power was latent, or was only rarely manifested, was the result of the self-chosen state of humiliation upon which the God-man had entered. In this state of humiliation, the communication of the contents of his divine nature to the human was mediated by the Holy Spirit. The God-man, in his servant-form, knew and taught and performed only what the Spirit permitted and directed (Mat. 3:16; John 3:34; Acts 1:2; 10:38; Heb. 9:14). But when thus permitted, he knew, taught, and performed, not, like the prophets, by power communicated from without, but by virtue of his own inner divine energy (Mat. 17:2; Mark 5:41; Luke 5:20, 21; 6:19; John 2:11, 24, 25; 3:13; 20:19).

Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2d ed., 2:77—“Human nature does not become divine, but (as Chemnitz has said) only the medium of the divine; as the moon has not a light of her own, but only shines in the light of the sun. So human nature may derivatively exercise divine attributes, because it is united to the divine in one person.”Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 151—“Our souls spiritualize our bodies, and will one day give us the spiritual body, while yet the body does not become spirit. So the Godhead gives divine powers to the humanity in Christ, while yet the humanity does not cease to be humanity.”Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:131—“The union exalts the human, as light brightens the air, heat gives glow to the iron, spirit exalts the body, the Holy Spirit hallows the believer by union with his soul. Fire gives to iron its own properties of lighting and burning; yet the iron does not become fire. Soul gives to body its life-energy; yet the body does not become soul. The Holy Spirit sanctifies the believer, but the believer does not become divine; for the divine principle is the determining one. We do not speak of airy light, of iron heat, or of a bodily soul. So human nature possesses the divine only derivatively. In this sense it isourdestiny to become‘partakers of the divine nature’(2 Pet. 1:4). Even in his earthly life, when he wished to be, or more correctly, when the Spirit permitted, he was omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, could walk the sea, or pass through closed doors. But, in his state of humiliation, he was subject to the Holy Spirit.”InMat. 3:16, the anointing of the Spirit at his baptism was not the descent of a material dove (“as a dove”). The dove-like appearance was only the outward sign of the coming forth of the Holy Spirit from the depths of his being and pouring itself like a flood into his divine-human consciousness.John 3:34—“for he giveth not the Spirit by measure”;Acts 1:2—“after that he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit unto the apostles”;10:38—“Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him”;Heb, 9:14—“the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish onto God.”When permitted by the Holy Spirit, he knew, taught, and wrought as God:Mat. 17:2—“he was transfigured before them”;Mark 5:41—“Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise”;Luke 5:20, 21—“Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.... Who can forgive sins, but God alone?”—Luke 6:19—“power came forth from him, and healed them all”;John 2:11—“This beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory”;24, 25—“he knew all men.... he himself knew what was in man”;3:13—“the Son of man, who is[pg 697]in heaven”[here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἔν τῷ ὀυρανῷ,—for advocacy of the common reading, see Broadus, in Hovey's Com., onJohn 3:13];20:19—“when the doors were shut ... Jesus came and stood in the midst.”Christ is the“servant of Jehovah”(Is. 42:1-7; 49:1-12; 52:13; 53:11) and the meaning of παῖς (Acts 3:13, 28; 4:27, 30) is not“child”or“Son”; it is“servant,”as in the Revised Version. But, in the state of exaltation, Christ is the“Lord of the Spirit”(2 Cor. 3:18—Meyer), giving the Spirit (John 16:7—“I will send him unto you”), present in the Spirit (John 14:18—“I come unto you”;Mat. 28:20—“I am with you always, even unto the the end of the world”), and working through the Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45—“The last Adam became a life-giving spirit”);2 Cor. 3:17—“Now the Lord is the Spirit”. On Christ's relation to the Holy Spirit, see John Owen, Works, 282-297; Robins, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1874:615; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 208-241.Delitzsch:“The conception of the servant of Jehovah is, as it were, a pyramid, of which the base is the people of Israel as a whole; the central part, Israel according to the Spirit; and the summit, the Mediator of Salvation who rises out of Israel.”Cheyne on Isaiah, 2:253, agrees with this view of Delitzsch, which is also the view of Oehler. The O. T. is the life of a nation; the N. T. is the life of a man. The chief end of the nation was to produce the man; the chief end of the man was to save the world. Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 59—“If humanity were not potentially and in some degree an Immanuel, God with us, there would never have issued from its bosom he who bore and revealed this blessed name.”We would enlarge and amend this illustration of the pyramid, by making the base to be the Logos, as Creator and Upholder of all (Eph. 1:23;Col. 1:16); the stratum which rests next upon the Logos is universal humanity (Ps, 8:5, 6); then comes Israel as a whole (Mat. 2:15); spiritual Israel rests upon Israel after the flesh (Is. 42:1-7); as the acme and cap stone of all, Christ appears, to crown the pyramid, the true servant of Jehovah and Son of man (Is. 53:11;Mat. 20:28). We may go even further and represent Christ as forming the basis of another inverted pyramid of redeemed humanity ever growing and rising to heaven (Is. 9:6—“Everlasting Father”;Is. 53:10—“he shall see his seed”;Rev. 22:16—“root and offspring of David”;Heb. 2:13—“I and the children whom God hath given me.”)

Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:131—“The union exalts the human, as light brightens the air, heat gives glow to the iron, spirit exalts the body, the Holy Spirit hallows the believer by union with his soul. Fire gives to iron its own properties of lighting and burning; yet the iron does not become fire. Soul gives to body its life-energy; yet the body does not become soul. The Holy Spirit sanctifies the believer, but the believer does not become divine; for the divine principle is the determining one. We do not speak of airy light, of iron heat, or of a bodily soul. So human nature possesses the divine only derivatively. In this sense it isourdestiny to become‘partakers of the divine nature’(2 Pet. 1:4). Even in his earthly life, when he wished to be, or more correctly, when the Spirit permitted, he was omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, could walk the sea, or pass through closed doors. But, in his state of humiliation, he was subject to the Holy Spirit.”

InMat. 3:16, the anointing of the Spirit at his baptism was not the descent of a material dove (“as a dove”). The dove-like appearance was only the outward sign of the coming forth of the Holy Spirit from the depths of his being and pouring itself like a flood into his divine-human consciousness.John 3:34—“for he giveth not the Spirit by measure”;Acts 1:2—“after that he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit unto the apostles”;10:38—“Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him”;Heb, 9:14—“the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish onto God.”

When permitted by the Holy Spirit, he knew, taught, and wrought as God:Mat. 17:2—“he was transfigured before them”;Mark 5:41—“Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise”;Luke 5:20, 21—“Man, thy sins are forgiven thee.... Who can forgive sins, but God alone?”—Luke 6:19—“power came forth from him, and healed them all”;John 2:11—“This beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory”;24, 25—“he knew all men.... he himself knew what was in man”;3:13—“the Son of man, who is[pg 697]in heaven”[here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἔν τῷ ὀυρανῷ,—for advocacy of the common reading, see Broadus, in Hovey's Com., onJohn 3:13];20:19—“when the doors were shut ... Jesus came and stood in the midst.”

Christ is the“servant of Jehovah”(Is. 42:1-7; 49:1-12; 52:13; 53:11) and the meaning of παῖς (Acts 3:13, 28; 4:27, 30) is not“child”or“Son”; it is“servant,”as in the Revised Version. But, in the state of exaltation, Christ is the“Lord of the Spirit”(2 Cor. 3:18—Meyer), giving the Spirit (John 16:7—“I will send him unto you”), present in the Spirit (John 14:18—“I come unto you”;Mat. 28:20—“I am with you always, even unto the the end of the world”), and working through the Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45—“The last Adam became a life-giving spirit”);2 Cor. 3:17—“Now the Lord is the Spirit”. On Christ's relation to the Holy Spirit, see John Owen, Works, 282-297; Robins, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1874:615; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 208-241.

Delitzsch:“The conception of the servant of Jehovah is, as it were, a pyramid, of which the base is the people of Israel as a whole; the central part, Israel according to the Spirit; and the summit, the Mediator of Salvation who rises out of Israel.”Cheyne on Isaiah, 2:253, agrees with this view of Delitzsch, which is also the view of Oehler. The O. T. is the life of a nation; the N. T. is the life of a man. The chief end of the nation was to produce the man; the chief end of the man was to save the world. Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 59—“If humanity were not potentially and in some degree an Immanuel, God with us, there would never have issued from its bosom he who bore and revealed this blessed name.”We would enlarge and amend this illustration of the pyramid, by making the base to be the Logos, as Creator and Upholder of all (Eph. 1:23;Col. 1:16); the stratum which rests next upon the Logos is universal humanity (Ps, 8:5, 6); then comes Israel as a whole (Mat. 2:15); spiritual Israel rests upon Israel after the flesh (Is. 42:1-7); as the acme and cap stone of all, Christ appears, to crown the pyramid, the true servant of Jehovah and Son of man (Is. 53:11;Mat. 20:28). We may go even further and represent Christ as forming the basis of another inverted pyramid of redeemed humanity ever growing and rising to heaven (Is. 9:6—“Everlasting Father”;Is. 53:10—“he shall see his seed”;Rev. 22:16—“root and offspring of David”;Heb. 2:13—“I and the children whom God hath given me.”)

(g) Effect upon the divine.—This communion of the natures was such that, although the divine nature in itself is incapable of ignorance, weakness, temptation, suffering, or death, the one person Jesus Christ was capable of these by virtue of the union of the divine nature with a human nature in him. As the human Savior can exercise divine attributes, not in virtue of his humanity alone, but derivatively, by virtue of his possession of a divine nature, so the divine Savior can suffer and be ignorant as man, not in his divine nature, but derivatively, by virtue of his possession of a human nature. We may illustrate this from the connection between body and soul. The soul suffers pain from its union with the body, of which apart from the body it would be incapable. So the God-man, although in his divine nature impassible, was capable, through his union with humanity, of absolutely infinite suffering.

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